Collaboration Brings Together an End-to-End Solutions for Universities

Solution:

Fully Managed Hosting

Vendor:

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Overview:

End-to-end management of Databee’s hosting (for their clients) including managing their entire hosted infrastructure including AWS accounts, VPN connections, data backup, security, alerting, system updates and patching

Benefits:

Fully managed hosting service that allows the client to focus on what they do best, and no need to get involved in the cloud hosting infrastructure.

Databee Business Systems is a Western Australian company that specialises in developing software applications for the higher education sector. They have designed a proprietary management system that streamlines the unique and complex examinations process. Universities across Australia harness the technology.

As universities started to adopt cloud services and migrate from IT on campus to cloud, Databee sought to partner with a service provider to deliver a fully managed cloud hosting solution. They would offer the hosting as a value-add service to maintain their client’s application infrastructure.

Solution

‘AWS comes with a level of complexity that you leave in the hands of experts’

Databee’s Director, Darren Arnt, said, ‘We’re continually developing the software to enhance the application with new features to maintain its industry-leading status. We didn’t want to divert our focus into hosting, yet we wanted to provide our customers with a solution. Because our customers trust us, whatever hosting service we were to recommend had to be a high-performing, reliable and secure platform.’ AWS is its own world, and you need expert skills. Truthfully, we didn’t have that level of expertise in-house, but I knew that Daniel Smith (from Appica) had in-depth knowledge. I also knew from our past working relationship that he would be reliable and represent my business well,’ he said. As each university has its own set of distinct requirements, the ability to interpret their needs was important, as was the necessity for the platform to be adaptable and scalable.

Solution

Managing complex platforms that work seamlessly

As part of the AWS Partner Network, Appica presented a fully managed and customisable solution that removes the need for onsite IT infrastructure to support and manage the software. The AWS platform is entirely adaptable to meet the universities’ custom implementation requirements across data retention, backups, VPN access, and security.

Acting as an extension of Databee’s business, Daniel often leads the discovery session. He consults directly with the university to flesh out the technical requirements and integrate the managed service.

Outcome

‘We continue to focus on what we do well, and the hosting ticks along without us having to worry about it.’

Darren explains, ‘We wanted to remain focused on our core business, and that is to continue providing Universities with better efficiencies through our flagship product, Exams Manager. Now, we have in place an offering that gives our clients seamless access to a reliable, secure cloud hosting solution.’

‘The platform is dynamic, allowing us to change and adapt quickly. If a client has a new requirement, then we can start work immediately on delivering it. It’s not a big deal to change something.’ Darren adds, ‘We rely heavily on Daniel’s expertise and know we have someone dependable to call on, and ready to help when we need it.’

Daniel agrees, ‘The outcome is quite simple. Databee have access to a high-performance managed platform that doesn’t break. It works beautifully so they can do what they do best; and that is, develop and support their software platform.’

Further Reading

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